Saturday afternoon’s contest in the Subway WHL Hub had two teams trending in the opposite directions.
The Winnipeg ICE came into the game fresh off of a 3-0 shutout win over the Prince Albert Raiders. The Regina Pats lost their last outing 7-2 to the Brandon Wheat Kings in a turnover-filled affair.
In the last meeting between these two clubs, the Pats came out on the short end of things. The ICE crushed the Pats 8-3 back on March 23rd.
Roddy Ross started his fourth straight game for the Pats. Rookie Daniel Hauser got the call for the ICE.
The game marked the midway point of the season for both teams.
Winnipeg struck early and never looked back as they skated to a 5-2 win over the Pats. Five different Winnipeg players hit the scoresheet and Hauser made 36 saves in the win.
“They were,” Pats head coach Dave Struch on the ICE being too strong for the Pats “I think we outshot them or tied them in shots. We had lots and lots of really good scoring opportunities. Their goalie played great. Again, we need to be near perfect.” Clearly, the Pats were not.
The ICE struck first. Just 1:52 in Skylar Bruce scored his first career goal to make it 1-0. His spin-around shot beat Ross through five-hole.
Both teams had a full powerplay advantage in the first period of play but neither connected. The ICE was given their second powerplay with ten seconds left in the first period.
Despite the first goal against, Ross and the Pats settled down. Their play got better and it was an even period otherwise.
Connor Bedard had the confidence to try the lacrosse goal but was unsuccessful.
Connor Bedard attempts the lacrosse goal ?@WHLPats | #SubwayWHLHub pic.twitter.com/eBLVszztZm
— The WHL (@TheWHL) April 3, 2021
The ICE took a 1-0 lead and a 10-8 shot advantage through 20 minutes.
Winnipeg started the second period with 1:50 left on their second powerplay of the game.
Connor McClennon made the Pats pay just 25 seconds into the frame. Peyton Krebs’ pass attempt deflected off of McClennon’s leg and past Ross for a 2-0 ICE advantage.
For stretches of the period, the ICE had the Pats hemmed in similar to a powerplay even though it was 5-on-5.
The Pats finally got some pressure after Winnipeg took a minor and came close on a couple of occasions.
A late second-period ICE goal at 18:49 put them up 3-0. Jakin Smallwood grabbed the rebound off a Krebs shot and scored.
Winnipeg owned quite a bit of the second period which led to a pair of goals to take a 3-0 lead. The ICE also outshot the Pats 17-14 to go up 29-22 overall.
Legend has it that a three-goal lead is the worst in hockey. We shall see.
At 5:03 the Pats finally broke the goose egg as Logan Nijhoff scored a powerplay marker. Ryker Evans and Connor Bedard assisted on the goal.
Penalty trouble for the Pats all but spells the end. Regina was down two men for over two minutes.
Conor Geekie scored a 5-on-3 goal at 7:41 to give the ICE a commanding 4-1 lead.
The Pats got one back as Carson Denomie converted a great pass from Bedard at 13:22. The 5-on-3 marker brought made the game 4-2.
On yet another powerplay, Zachary Benson scored at 16:38 to make it 5-2. The goal was a weird one. Winnipeg trying a jam play and crashed in on Ross, who in turn thought he had it covered at the left post. The puck somehow became free and Benson potted an easy goal into the open right side.
Does anyone remember the old NHL video game trick when the goalie would get stuck on a wraparound? This goal had that feel.
That was it for the scoring. The Pats did try to make a game of it but Winnipeg was just too strong in the end. They outshot the ICE 16-8 in the final period and 38-37 in the game.
“They have anywhere from 10 to 12 high-end forwards that are really hard to handle,” said Struch of the ICE. “We were young on the backend, but those are experiences we have to get through. It is hard. You don’t want to go through it for too long, but our players have to learn from it, because a lot of the mistakes, a lot of the opportunities that they got, our young guys could have done better plays and made it easier on themselves.”
“It wasn’t just the backend,” Struch continued “our front-end young guys had a tough go tonight as well making the good hard right play.”
“I don’t think that we are where we want to be at all right now,” Pats defenseman Kyler Walker on the teams’ 4-6-2-0 start “I think that we want to be above .500. we set goals for ourselves we failed to our goal today and we’re not happy about it.”
Patterings: Bedard’s pair of points extended his point streak to 12 games. He now has 22 (8G, 14A) points in 12 career games. The ICE went 3-for-7 and the Pats went 2-for-6 on the powerplay. Winnipeg swept the three stars: Hauser (36 saves), Krebs (2A) and Smallwood (1G, 1A) received the honors. The Pats look to get off to a good start in the second half when they play Moose Jaw Monday at 4 p.m.
